


Photograph

by Kaleidoscope_Carousel



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Canon Divergent, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-03
Updated: 2015-02-03
Packaged: 2018-03-10 08:34:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 946
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3283880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kaleidoscope_Carousel/pseuds/Kaleidoscope_Carousel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everybody groans and rolls their eyes the day Felicity skips down the Foundry steps with an ancient-looking Kodak camera in her hands. <br/>Inspired by <a href="http://gnimaerd.tumblr.com/post/91489566090">this tumblr post</a></p>
            </blockquote>





	Photograph

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this six months ago, but never got around to posting it here. Tumblr is not great for archiving, and I want all my stories in one place.

Everybody groans and rolls their eyes the day Felicity skips down the Foundry steps with an ancient-looking Kodak camera in her hands. She points it at each of them in turn and snaps a few pictures, despite their best efforts to hide or turn away, before convincing a reluctant Diggle to take a photo of her, Oliver, and Sara together. 

“I want to have something special,” she says when Oliver grumbles about secrecy, and preserving anonymity. “I want to have something for me, to remember the good times together. Especially because of the danger we are all in all the time. So the least you can do, Mr Grumpy Pants, is to smile for the camera and say cheese.”

Most of the pictures come back blurry, after Felicity develops them in her cousin’s darkroom. The camera is one of the ones you actually have to focus manually, and between Sara diving behind a pillar (you can only tell it’s her because of the fuzzy stream of flying hair), and Oliver throwing his hands in front of his face (Felicity calls him Doctor Octopus for a week because of the effect) the only one that really turns out is the one of the three of them, smiling for Dig. It’s not much of a smile, on Oliver’s part, but it is a recognisable facial expression that isn’t a frown, so Felicity takes what she can get on it.

It becomes a ritual for them, a photo op for whenever they have a spare moment before charging into battle once again. Surprisingly, Oliver starts taking over camera duties fairly often, and his shots are beautiful in their artistry. They actually frame the one he took of Sara on the salmon ladder from below, her head surrounded in a halo from the lamps on the ceiling, face serene in her swing in the moment before she clenched her muscles in the effort it takes to jump to the next rung. 

“Well if this vigilante thing doesn’t work out,” Felicity says, “maybe you can get a job as a professional photographer.”

She starts to teach him how to develop his own photos, and pretty soon the Queen Mansion gets its own devoted darkroom. This is where Oliver develops his favourite photo of them all, one he keeps in a frame by his bed. It’s a picture of Felicity, so concentrated on her computers that she doesn’t even realise she’s having her picture taken. Her brow is furrowed, and she’s squinting at the screen, pen between her lips, eyes focussed and intent. Sara smiles every time she sees it.

“It’s just so Felicity,” she says, and Oliver nods. 

None of them mention the real reason why the photos keep happening, because no one wants to bring it up. No one wants to be the one to have to give Lyla the shot of Diggle and Oliver hamming it up on the training mats, Diggle’s arm firmly around Oliver’s neck in a headlock, both of them beaming at the camera, because that’s the only way Dig’s daughter will ever know her dad’s face.

None of them want to hand Detective Lance and his family a box full of memories of Sara, the only thing they have left of her; Sara trying on Felicity’s glasses, shrieking with laughter as Oliver carries her around the lair on his shoulders, or frowning in concentration as she adjusts the microscope to analyse a sample of something or other. 

They especially don’t talk about the fact that if something ever happened to Oliver, these are the only things that would remain to physically prove their friendship. Because Oliver Queen: playboy, CEO, billionaire, boss, is not the Oliver they want to remember. And there are no photos of Oliver Queen and his PA playing rock, paper, scissors over who gets to choose takeout, or finally hugging after Oliver comes home after an especially gruelling mission (they can blame Sara for that one, she had to climb into the rafters to get away from Oliver after he heard the click of the shutter). 

There are also no photos of Oliver Queen and his driver arm wrestling, or eating Chinese on the couch with their feet up on the coffee table Felicity insisted on bringing in, or falling soundly asleep on that same couch at four in the morning.

Nobody wants to talk about that.

And so the Foundry is a silent and desolate place when the last person they expect is the first one not to come home.

They sit on the training mats together, and pull out the box of photos, handling them gently and reverently, because these photos are delicate things, and they are all they have left. They pass them around carefully, looking at them, studying them, telling each other the stories behind each and every one, despite the fact that they probably already know. Because they were there.

“Remember when. . .” and they do.

As carefully as they were brought out, the photos are put back, and Oliver, Sara, and Diggle collapse into each other to finally let the anguish out. Sara cries until she hyperventilates, while Diggle lets the tears stream silently down his face. Oliver sits in the tangle of arms, and shakes and shakes and shakes, every so often letting out a little gasp so they know he’s still breathing. 

That night, Oliver’s favourite photo is brought from the mansion into the Foundry and hung on the wall. They don’t need a photograph to remember, but they all want it there. Every time they go out on a mission, they look to the wall and salute. 

In honour and in memory of Felicity.


End file.
